Turning the themes of his previous picture book Lost and Found around, Oliver Jeffers's tale of a boy and moose stars a child, Wilfred, who must meet the animal on its own terms.
The penguin sought a friend in Lost and Found. Here Wilfred claims ownership of a moose that's its own master. Yet the boy finds a way to make the friendship work. On a white background, blond-haired Wilfred, sporting bow tie and suspenders, makes a kind of "ta-da" gesture toward a four-legged spindly-legged moose with generous-sized antlers: "Wilfred owned a moose." The moose came to the boy one day, and "he knew, just knew that it was meant to be his." Standing on a chair, the boy attaches a tag labeled "Marcel" on the furry fellow's right antler. Wilfred explains "the rules of how to be a good pet," but Marcel rarely follows them. Since the moose likes to go his own way, and the boy has a poor sense of direction, he takes a ball of blue string to find his way back, which trails off the sides of the pages.
Jeffers creates thought balloons to depict the boy's fantasy of a tuxedo-clad moose serving drinks from a tray, and the two riding together over Niagara Falls in a barrel. The author-artist superimposes images of his boy and moose heroes atop stunning landscape paintings of the Grand Tetons, Mt. Hood and Wyoming's Jackson Lake (credited to Alexander Dzigurski on the copyright page). On one particularly long walk, Wilfred makes "a terrible discovery.... Someone else thought she owned the moose." A blue-haired lady in a red dress exclaims, "Rodrigo! You're back!" Wilfred thinks it only proper to explain, "This moose belongs to me!" When a dejected Wilfred rushes home to sulk and gets tangled in his blue string, who comes along to save him? Marcel. It turns out he can follow rule 73 to a T: "Rescuing your owner from perilous situations" (of course it helps that Wilfred became entangled under an apple tree).
Children will be thoroughly entertained as they detect more than Wilfred does about the ways of animals in the wild, and also enjoy the book's gentle lesson that true friendship involves give and take. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: Oliver Jeffers's delightfully quirky tale of friendship between a proper boy and a wild moose pays homage to nature and the importance of give-and-take in any relationship.